


you travel the world, I make scores on the wood

by kuro49



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant - Post Pitfall, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1494070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a guestroom in Hercules Hansen’s house where the walls still smell like fresh paint and the dust gathers on the windowsill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you travel the world, I make scores on the wood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the _Key_ square of my Herculeigh Bingo card (first ever square to be called on my card too, glad I could finally contribute something to the challenge! :D)

They mark time with different things.

When Chuck has been younger and growing up too fast, Herc would make lines in the wood of the living room threshold, writing down the date next to the line chipped into the wood with his knife. Just as what Angela’s father has done for her when she was a little girl and not foolish enough to fall for a boy that has just signed his life away to the force.

When Raleigh has been younger and growing up across the world, picking up languages whenever their father has them staying in one place for longer than a month. When Raleigh has been younger, he’s been chasing after Yance for those gaping three years between them, marking the days between himself and an older brother that always seemed cooler, smarter, better.

They mark time with different things, and different people.

And it feels like a lifetime ago, now that they’ve done all that they can, now that they’ve given all that they have.

It’s been two years since the closing of the Breach, two years since Chuck Hansen’s death, and five years since Yancy Becket’s. And if Raleigh Becket can tell anyone anything, he will tell Hercules Hansen that loss is a process that never really ends.

Not that Herc needs to hear those words from him, not when he is the only other person in the world that understands what it’s like to have a co-pilot die and lived long enough to mourn them like they have. (There may be three living Jaeger pilots remaining in the world, but there’s only two to have lost their co-pilots, lost one half of that headspace, to abandon half of their souls like _that_.)

Herc packs up his life into two simple duffel bags, most of it Max’s things, and with Chuck’s dog in tow, Herc goes home. He hasn’t done that for a long time now. And Raleigh takes to traveling the world, this, he hasn’t done in a long time too.

In the two years since the closing of the Breach, they don’t see each other aside from the phone calls and the brief emails, keeping each other in contact with the rest of what remains of the Shatterdome crew, keeping each other in check until Mako calls them back to Hong Kong for the anniversary of the war clock being called to zero.

It doesn’t hurt any less, being the pivotal characters in stopping the end of the world.

The Hong Kong Shatterdome feels hollowed out. Even with the replica machines, the prototype designs, and the blueprints of the fallen Mark Is displayed carefully around the building like it’s a museum, the preservation of his life once-was still feels a little unreal. Like this is all from another era Herc’s never lived in, like this is a war he’s never stood on the front lines fighting. (Like those hologram projections of heroes aren’t his friends, like that isn’t his _son_ in his drivesuit walking down the hallway towards Striker’s Conn-Pod without him.) Herc can’t understand how Mako can stand staying in this place, even with the research division having taken over what remains of the PPDC, but he does understand her devotion to Stacker Pentecost and his legacy is this.

He feels a little helpless but it’s a good thing, Herc wants to think, standing there on the helipad with a small duffel bag in hand.

“Herc.”

He turns, and that’s not a handshake of old camaraderie that welcomes him, it’s a hug he is engulfed in. Pulling back, there is the familiar face of a man, a little bit more weathered away from his travels across the world. When he smiles, Herc doesn’t imagine what the other sees in return.

“Raleigh.”

There is comfort, however slight, when Raleigh sees Herc again. To see, for himself, that the other man is alright, however that word can be defined.

“You didn’t bring Max?”

Herc shakes his head with a small laugh, following Raleigh as he gestures for them to get out of the Hong Kong winters, made worse with the moisture always in the air. “Dog’s too old to be put through this every single year, he’s better off at home.”

“Lucky dog, sitting out there in the sun. While look at the rest of us, being parade around.” Raleigh lets out a sigh, already imagining Max lying sprawled on Herc’s porch like he owns the world. “What I’d give for some sun and surf.”

“If you’re not at the world’s beck and call, Raleigh, I’ve always got a guestroom gathering dust.”

When Herc tells him that, he tells it to him with a tilt of his mouth, a smile that is soft and barely there. Raleigh isn’t taken back by the offer, just that the thought of a guestroom in Hercules Hansen’s house where the walls still smell like fresh paint and the dust gathers on the windowsill can have him smiling something just as soft.

“I might just take you up on it.”

 

What changes is not marked by anything but a single touch.

Of his lips over his.

He tastes bitter like the beer they have been drinking, he also tastes sad. As the world outside celebrates an anniversary that still has them waking up in cold sweat, remembering a time when their heads aren’t half emptied out by men buried in empty graves, they try to drink themselves into a waste. Until they can’t think straight, until Herc isn’t so guilty and Raleigh isn’t full of regrets. Until Herc kisses back, and Raleigh sinks into the feeling of having a war finally calming into something manageable, even if it is just for a moment.

Raleigh figures they can’t heal one another.

Hercules finds that they can’t hurt each other.

It is two years since the closing of the Breach, and in the week after, when the world can retire her heroes for another year, Herc stands on the helipad like the day he came to Hong Kong on Mako’s request.

“My offer still stands.”

And standing down on the helipad as the chopper takes off to the sky with Hercules Hansen and his duffel bag, Raleigh Becket has a key sitting cool in the centre of his palm.

This is where there is probably something like symbolism to go with it and Raleigh has never claimed to know the man well but he has known him for a long time now, and Hercules Hansen has never been one for poetry.

 

They mark time with different things.

And in a house where the entrance to the living room isn’t lined with scores of a child all grown up, they mark it with the sun rising and the long shadows thrown over all the furniture when it finally sets in the night.

Sometimes, Raleigh wakes up to the shout of Yancy’s last words, cut off over the rain and metal of Gipsy’s hull being torn into two. And sometimes, he wakes up to the colours of the Anteverse lighting up another world against the dark of the room. Either way, he wakes up to an empty bed in a house not his own.

Raleigh Becket has always been an early riser.

And it’s not a competition but there is just a little bit of a petulant frown on his face when he walks downstairs to the sight of Hercules Hansen sipping coffee by the kitchen counter, leafing through the day’s newspaper looking like he’s been awake for far longer.

“Mornin’, Raleigh.”

“Morning.”

The first time, Raleigh has stood by the kitchen door, looking just a little shell-shocked because not once has he met someone who can wake up earlier than him. But a simple _I’ve been in the military since before you were born, kid,_ reminds him just exactly who the man is.

It’s been two, three, four years since the closing of the Breach. That is two, three, four years since Chuck Hansen’s death and five, six, seven years since Yancy Becket’s. It still feels unbearable at times but he’s gone on for so long, they both have. It is only fair that they continue, just a little longer, just until they can’t.

The world is demanding less and less of them, and they’re content.

They mark time with different things, and different people now.

Herc with Raleigh sitting on the porch with Max’s pups, all five of them rolling over each other at their feet. Raleigh with Herc taking a short drive to the beach for a little sun and surf. There’s salt water on his skin and sunscreen at the ready, there’s also a kiss when he leans down, still dripping with the ocean on his lips.

“Coffee?”

It’s not much.

But it’s also been a lot more than what they have had for years.

“Sounds good.”

Herc pours him a cup and adds the cream and sugar in while Raleigh settles in front of the stove with a pan, eggs and bacon already on the countertop waiting for him. Raleigh still remembers that first morning he lands in Australia, three months after Herc makes his offer. Knocking on the door of a house, expecting someone to answer only to have a shout make its way through the wood.

“Gave you a key for a reason, Becket!”

His eyes widen and he nearly drops his bags to the ground as he tries to get it out of his pocket. The sound of the lock clicking open really shouldn’t be a comfort but stepping through the threshold and making his way through the hallway to see the man standing by the stove, pushing scrambled eggs onto two separate plates with a spatula in hand, Raleigh feels a little helpless.

“Mako called ahead for you, she also said to tell you that you’re welcome.”

It’s takes a few seconds for Raleigh to recover, but when he does, he is laughing and it’s not soft or sad.

“Tell her thank you.”

Herc tilts his chin to the kitchen table and picks up both plates. “You can tell her yourself afterwards.”

It still aches in places where their co-pilots belong, it also hurts in the places where they have been torn from. But they are marking down their time in breakfasts eaten with the sun coming through the windows, and a guestroom that continues to gather dust.

This, it’s a damn good thing.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
